Watch The War on Drugs Jam on the Beach on This Day in 2011

Just over two years ago, The War on Drugs released their major label debut, A Deeper Understanding, for Atlantic Records. While the Philly band’s 2014 album, Lost in the Dream, was the one to actually crack the top 25 on our list of the best albums of the 2010s, both records are sweeping artistic statements.

While The War on Drugs, a troupe of experimental post-rock masters founded in 2005 by Adam Granduciel and Kurt Vile (who of course would later forgo the group for a solo career), have been making music for most of this century, the years 2014-2017 marked them as some of the most important rock musicians of the decade. A Deeper Understanding and Lost in the Dream are masterpieces, yes, but the rest of their catalogue is definitely worth exploring, too.

The band’s third LP, Slave Ambient, arrived in 2011. We were lucky enough to host Granduciel for an acoustic session on the beach in Pensacola, Fla., on this day (Oct. 15) in 2011, just a few months after Slave Ambient’s release. He played “Baby Missiles” from that album, plus “Barrel of Batteries,” from 2008’s Wagonwheel Blues.

Watch the band perform “Baby Missiles” below, and find the whole set further down.